Tag Archives: ghosts

Looking to outrun the ache of his first broken heart, Devin Jones takes a job at Joyland, a small amusement park on the coast of North Carolina. He quickly makes friends and finds his niche in the carney world. And that is just about it. Do not get me wrong, Joyland is a good story. King is at the top of his game with the human element that makes him stand out in horror fiction. King’s scares are so scary because he takes such meticulous care with his characters. He does not just tell us what the person thinks and feels, he goes back as far as necessary to tell us why. Read More »

The Eterna Files, the excellent first installment in a unique new series, begins with a familiar story–the death of Abraham Lincoln. Immediately thereafter, the tale veers into less-recognizable territory, with young “spiritualist” Clara Templeton declaring that the president should have been made immortal in order to protect the position. Lincoln’s widow, Mary, instantly latches onto the idea, resulting in the birth of the Eterna group, with the secret mission to investigate immortality. Read More »

Ava Trumble has always wanted to own the family mansion, and after her Aunt Lois’ death, she is left the house-–with one stipulation. Ava has to discover what had happened to Sarah Kerrick two hundred years earlier, and present the evidence to her attorney. If she fails to provide the proper verification, the house will go to the historical society. Ava will do almost anything to prevent that, so she calls a national television show and requests they investigate the house to help her solve the mystery. Read More »

Something dark and sinister lurks beneath the manicured lawns of Spring House, an old plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans. When Caitlin Chaisson witnesses her husband’s long suspected infidelity, a rash decision wakes the darkness that has been waiting for years to come out in the open and enact its terrible plan. Read More »

The tremendous Things Half in Shadow grabs the reader with its very first sentence, refusing to let go for the duration of the novel. Our narrator, journalist Edward Clark, begins by describing his visit to the scene of a dead young woman, called there by his friend, Inspector Barclay, in the hopes that Edward will print the story with a photo which will lead to identifying the woman. This effort becomes unnecessary when the dead woman’s mother and sister arrive at the scene, with the mother’s surprising news that her daughter’s ghost appeared to her, stating that she was dead. Read More »

Detective Oliver Tucker was a good cop, always determined to solve the case and get justice for those who were wronged. After his death, he continued on, as a ghost, helping his partner, Bear Braddock, solve cases and protecting his wife, Angel, to the best of his ability. Angel, formally Dr. Angela Hill-Tucker, was a history professor who had sponsored a black-tie charity fundraiser, and Tuck dropped in to see how it was going. Noticing a man across the room, dressed in the style of a 1930’s gangster, Tuck became suspicious when the gangster headed in the direction of Angel’s table. As Angel danced with one of her guests, he tried to catch up to his wife, who was also dancing, but before he could, he was shot and killed. Read More »

The Naremore family had decided to leave London and find a beautiful spot in the country, where they would be away from the city’s influences. Parents Steven and Kirsty, and their children, Jordan and Tim, quickly rejected the first two places, but they all fell in love with the next one, called The Hollow. It was a large house, with twin towers, an apple orchard, and a moat surrounding the property. The house seemed welcoming, almost loving, and the Naremores quickly fell under its spell. Read More »

Nickie Nick is reeling from a tragic loss. It is the worst pain she has ever felt in her seventeen years, and it has put her out of commission for a month. Her street friends stop by to check on her, but she just cannot get out of bed. Her governess, Fanny, is about at wit’s end. She finally threatens to tell Nickie’s parents that she roams the streets at night fighting vampires if Nickie will not get up and start to live again. Fanny’s own story of past loss helps Nickie realize her life is not over and she agrees to visit her friends. Read More »

Intrepid ghost heroine, Jensen, returns in Another One Bites the Dust, book two in the highly original Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire series. Picking up a few weeks after the events of book one, Jensen and her ghost friends, along with still-alive psychic Amanda Lee, attempt to make the best of their situation: realizing that even though they uncovered a killer, a dark spirit of some sort was released through a portal in the process. As a result, not only do they have the dark spirit to contend with, but also the ire of Wendy, the young woman (able to see and speak with ghosts) upset with Jensen for having gone inside the head of her older brother, Gavin, numerous times to determine whether or not he was the murderer of Amanda Lee’s lover (he was not). Read More »

It has been years since Akasha tried to destroy the vampire nation descended from her, but was thwarted by Lestat, the other vampires of the Coven of the Articulate, and the ancient twins, Maharet and Mekare. Now, a new Voice is rousing old vampires from their sleep, pushing them to destroy the younger generations the world over. Read More »

Charlotte “Charley” Davidson, part-time private investigator and full-time grim reaper, is back for Seventh Grave and No Body, the next in Darynda Jones’ sassy Grave series.

In this seventh installment, Charley investigates a string of seemingly unconnected suicides. Her investigation is hampered by the threat of a pack of slavering hellhounds sent by Satan himself to rip the reaper to shreds. Not even Reyes, her steamy fiancée (who is, coincidentally, the Son of Satan) knows how to fight the dozen demon dogs. Read More »

Jane Seyton was inexplicably drawn to Stormclyffe Hall when she saw a picture of it while working on research for her dissertation. After writing numerous letters to the Earl, she was finally allowed to visit, but was told to wait until renovations were completed. Taking matters into her own hands, Jane waited four months, and then booked a flight, eager to tour Stormclyffe Hall and learn all she could about the curse that haunted the Carlisle family. Read More »

Colin MacAlisdair was visiting the country estate of his friend Edmund’s family, helping to discover the reasons behind the hauntings at Whitehill. Edmund’s father had collected an eclectic group of people, the local vicar, his sister, and a medium and her assistant, all for the purpose of conducting a séance. Colin was surprised, when on his first night at Whitehill, he met Regina, the daughter of the house when she climbs up the plum tree outside his balcony, and proceeded to give advice, thinking Colin was her brother Edmund. Read More »

Eric Carter has a problem–well, more than one. A necromancer now “married,” or, at the very least, linked, to Santa Muerte, the Aztec goddess of death (after she killed his sister, no less), Eric now possesses pitch-black eyes that require the use of sunglasses so as to not freak people out. When he meets a fellow mage, Kettleman, at an observatory to get some information on how to separate himself from Santa Muerte, two things happen: he hears a voice warning him about the meeting, and after speaking briefly with Kettleman, a former associate of Eric’s parents, the man attacks him with a wicked-looking knife. Read More »

Marnie Baranuik is back to solve more paranormal crimes in her usual wacky, bumbling way in Last Impressions. She has barely recovered from a case chockful of exploding zombies, and is dealing with her Paranormal Crimes Unit of the FBI getting suspended for an Internal Affairs investigation, when she gets a call from Constable Patrick Schenk in the sleepy town of her origin in Ontario, Canada. A missing woman had Marnie’s business card, and the detective asks for her help. Read More »

Harper Blaine is investigating the mysterious return of the ship Seawitch. It had disappeared twenty-seven years ago, all of its passengers presumed dead. During the investigation, she gets to work with the skeptical Detective Rey Solis, who has had difficulties with Harper in the past. However, she eventually explains the weirdness that he has seen and hopes that he is open minded enough to believe her. Read More »

Cassidy runs her unusual family business, Trifles and Follies, located in Charleston, under the guise of buying old antiques and items people would like to get rid of for one reason or another. Unknown to most, the shop’s true purpose revolves around Cassidy’s psychometic ability (touching an item and seeing the history associated with it) to determine if the piece has an unsettling (haunted or worse) characteristic that may prove a problem for future owners, or even dangerous. For acquisitions that fall into the latter category, Cassidy enlists the aid of her colleague, Teag, who possesses his own magical ability, and Sorren, the five-hundred-year-old vampire who has worked with her family for centuries. Read More »

A Plunder of Souls, the fabulous third installment in the outstanding Thieftaker Chronicles series, returns once again to the streets of eighteenth-century Boston and the trials and tribulations of Ethan Kaille. The story begins with Ethan attempting to elude fellow thieftaker and perennial thorn in his side, Sephira Pryce, and her band of enforcers. After an encounter in which Ethan, at great Read More »

The highly-entertaining Better Homes and Hauntings tells the story, past and present, of Crane’s Nest, a palatial home built on its own island off the coast of Rhode Island at the beginning of the twentieth century. Soon after its construction, the lady of the house, Catherine Whitney, was murdered, and the house soon thereafter closed up and not used again, her husband the main suspect in her death. Over the years, the Whitney descendants, many plagued by extremely bad financial circumstances, have come to the house looking for items of value, especially Catherine’s famous jewel collection. Read More »

It is the Christmas season in London, and it is also the perfect time for an unknown virus to be unleashed so it affects a larger crowd. This virus severs a person, releasing a spectral “ghost” that floats into the air and hovers about the city. The thing that is left behind is a sort of zombie, just a walking, angry predator who has nothing left except its most base instincts. Read More »